Hello,
After a bit of advice please.
Background: Separated from my partner for 5 years. We share child custody. During relationship counseling, the counselor basically gave up on my partner due to the fact they never accept responsibility ( they were sending inappropriate messages to other people, one of which they end up with ) and basically put every issue of our laureateship on me. After the 3rd session the councilor called and advised that my partner ( at the time ) is unlikely to change and probably has cluster B personality disorder. Off i went onto Google, and they have lots of the signs of Borderline / Narcissistic personality disorder - Which explained the frequent lies, gas lighting and total inability to see them doing anything wrong. They are NEVER to blame and will lie or reinvent the story to cover up previous lies.
I protected myself by going grey rock. I keep contact to a minimum and always in writing. I always had concerns over how there attitude / lies / never to blame will impact on our children, and in the early days, they would often get confused by the lies. Our Children are 12 and 10. Fortunately, as they have got older, they now trust nothing my ex partner says.. They have heard so many lies or my ex has changed plans at the last minute to suit, that my children are used to it. I let them vent their frustrations, but have no need to bad mouth the ex, as they see first hand. It is actually a huge relief that they see it and understand that my ex lies, as they don't question themselves or think they are the ones going crazy.
However, due to concerns i have with their home life at my ex's house, i am looking to increase custody, which is what the children have requested. The initial part of this process is mediation, and this is where i would like advice please.
Although neutral, the mediators focus initially to to ensure my ex and I communicate better over the children and advised that i was having a negative impact on the children by not having a positive relationship with my ex. While my ex would happily spend weekends with the kids and me, I have nothing to do with my ex and always keep away from them.
I would add, that (IMO and the opinion of many others ) i am the Rock in the children's lifes - The hand made my birthday card from last week, my 10 year old wrote "I hope to follow in your footsteps and be a loving, determined and supporting parent. Just remember you are my number one star ". Hence to be told i am impacting on my children's upbringing is concerning.
The Mediator says me not being seen to be "happy families" with my ex is not positive for the children and that we need to interact when together. I made it very clear that i have no respect for my ex because they frequently lie and threaten myself and the children, even giving a recent text message example where 2 messages totally contradicted each other and it was a lie that had upset the children. While sat in mediation with my ex and the mediator, my ex denied sending the message / says i misinterpreted it ( it was open in front of me and it is very clear that they stated they did something). Instead of addressing the root cause ( lies ) The mediator advised that we shouldn't use the word "lie" and we should refer to it as my ex getting a bit confused / miscommunication and maybe the ex didn't mean to say they had done something when they hadn't ??
The mediator then proceeded to tell me when my children bring up and issue with my ex partner lying ( which is frequent as there are so many lies, they lie to cover the older lie ) , i should turn it positive and say something along the line of "oh they have probably got confused and mixed up the dates" or something along them lines to defuse their frustration and appear positive about the ex.
So please - i need help on this. I am being told by a lady who has 20 years experience (mediator ) that i need to lie to the children to cover up my ex's frequent lies. Effectively my ex gas lights my children daily and they are smart enough to see it, but now i am being told i need to gas light to the children to cover up the ex's lies. The mediator has even suggested family therapy to work on this ?
This really doesn't sit well with me, and i don't like the idea of lying to my children. Could i please get some honest feedback on this.. thanks